A character study of Alex in A Clockwork Orange ; she also gave it to her husband and he ate it. Then the eyes of both were opened and the Lord God called the man and said: "What will it be, huh?" should violent video games not be banned"? Get an original essay The answer is humanity's choice: seek God or follow one's natural desires and the truth is irrelevant. He is in the Bible and in Alex's world. Like Adam and Eve in Garden, the Lord asks Burgess's protagonist the same question that Moses asked his Israelites: I have given you the ability to choose. Choose for yourself this day whom you will serve (Joshua 24:15) Some might say that Alex's choices were all determined. from the society in which he lived, but they are nothing more than any choices that we, as human beings, freely possessed. will do, will do. At some point the responsibility must fall on the person making the choice and not on the situation. The choices Alex makes make up his version of the Bible's salvation story: anarchic sinfulness of the lawless man, sanctification that changes outward actions but not the inner heart, rebellion against this sanctification that leads to death, and final redemption through Love. His story is the Gospel according to Alex. "There is none righteous; no, not one... All have fallen away, all have stooped alike." (Romans 3:12) Alex opens the novel as the perfect Kierkegardan aesthetic man. What will it be, huh? It will be, for a while, Kierkegard's first human stage. The aesthetic is primarily concerned with one's individual existence and the sensory experiences one can gain through that existence. This is Alex. After raping the children, he says: "I stayed there, dirty, nagoy and beautiful, fucked and tired on the bed." (46) Furthermore, since the aesthete is concerned only with himself, he enjoys his solitude and secrecy. Alex, of course, is this in spades. He locks himself in his room and distances himself from his family: "I gave him a dirty straight, as if to say pay attention to his and I'll take care of mine." (49) He is extremely individualistic. Fittingly, so is everyone around him: the millicents, the governor, his parents: there is no communion in this world because they share no common belief or purpose. The reason is perhaps as simple as Alex says: "Badness is of the self, of the one, of the thou or of strange things... what I do I do because I like doing it". (40) Later, when the government chooses to reform Alex, they follow the same rule, not because individualism is wrong, but like Alex and F. Alexander, they wish to create their own aesthetic world where their individualism is the only one that exists. . This is why Alex hurts people, not just because he enjoys violence, but because those he hurts do not further his individual purpose. Human society is his society, and once someone stops serving that society, then he stops serving any purpose in life (23). Alex is the first modern utilitarian killer. Only aesthetics lie in moral darkness. “In the beginning… darkness was on the surface of the abyss.” (Genesis 1:1-2)Darkness is the realm of aesthetic man. All of Alex's actions take place in the darkness, literally and figuratively. They travel at night and then reside in the den of iniquity, the Korona Milk Bar, "there was as yet no law against the proud dome of the new vesches which these placed in the old moloko." (1) Furthermore, just as Adam and Eve hid their sin from God with fig leaves, so Alex and his droogs use darkness and disguise tohide from their god, the government. They also do it with words. Not only is Nadsat a degenerative symbol of the West's defeat in the Cold War, but it is Alex's attempt to mask his depravity. Instead of rape and assault it says "inside out" and "tolchok". Like Adam and Eve's fig leaves, Alex's darkness and disguise are necessary to create the beauty he appreciates. “Now the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married such as they chose.” (Gen. 6:2)This beauty is what the aesthetic man seeks. Like angels, Alex sees beauty and grasps it. When he finds a woman, he does the old "in and out" with whoever he likes. When he fights with Billyboy's gang, their battle is like a waltz: lunge, parry, lunge, lunge, and first place again (17). When he fights with his brothers, it's art in action, a dance "I counted odin, dva, tree, and I went ak, ak, ak... Then I made a swish... and I cut... up, cross, cut." (54) Like the builders of Babel who tried to build a "tower that reached to heaven" (Gen 11.3), so too Alexios desires beauty only for his own selfish interest. However, it is a beauty that, although detestable, is understandable in light of the world in which it lives. The government has removed all true beauty, art, theater, literature from the world. Alex's substitute is violence. It uses the same human passions, arousing the same emotions as art. This is why Alex continually destroys books, because they compete with his grotesque definition of beauty. “Then the blood comes out, my brothers, very beautiful indeed.” Like Satan's beauty, beneath the blanket of darkness, what appears beautiful is actually a "horrorshow," a spectacle similar to the violent symphonies he worships. He describes his attacks as a masterpiece that he has composed and is orchestrating, with the screams of his victims as the chords and Catwoman's death as the crescendo. For the man who chooses to be a slave to his own sin, beauty is found in the darkness: "Men loved darkness rather than light because their works were evil." (John 3:18-20) “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” (Romans 1:25) It is because of the violence in the orchestra's music that Alex chooses Ludwig Van as his god: "Music has ever refined me, O my brothers, and made me feel like old Bog himself, ready to do with the old donner and blitzen and I have veck and ptitsa crawling away in my power haha." (42). But what Ludwig Van inspires in Alex is not complete satisfaction, but a promise of something greater, "the beautiful happy melody about joy that is a spark as glorious as heaven." (46). Music is orgasmic and is his way of achieving bliss, but this bliss is just a spark of true ecstasy. Alex and his droogs search through the old moloko: "Then the lights started crackling like atoms... and you were about to get introduced to the old Bog or God, when it's all over. You're back here and now" whining kind of ." (4) In seeking transcendent experience they seek God, even if Alex refuses to agree to do so: "You were not put on this earth just to come into contact with God." (4) It is as Paul says: "No one seek God." (Romans 3:11). It is the race of Israelites before the golden calf, who exchange God for something present, temporary, and satisfying. Alex chooses the temporary over the eternal, a choice that can be seen in his attack on HOME, a symbolic attack of the sinner's choice to rebel against heaven. In HOME, F. Alexander, whose life sadly mirrors that of Burgess, writes of man's ability to choose God, "a man... capable ofsweetness... to drip juicily, at last, around the bearded lips of God." (21). But Alex has "exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things." (Romans 1:25 ) He prefers lies and this man's truth is of no use in his life. "In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." (John 1:4-6)The truth still existsHowever. Both Alex and the State attack a man in an alley who sings of love, but both sides they refuse to accept this light in the darkness because it interferes with their aesthetics. Their worlds cannot have love, because love means responsibility towards others before yourself, the antagonist of aesthetics. Therefore man must be stopped. However, no matter how many times they try to suppress him, he sings the Song of Songs, the song of love. He sings until Alex attacks him and his blood is shed: "One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, causing a sudden flow of blood." (John 19:33-34). Even in prison among the true sinners he sings: "They crucified him together with the criminals, one on his right hand, the other on his left." (Luke 23: 33) His love is analogous to the love of God in Christ, a love that in the first part Alex seeks and resists. However, even if Alex does not choose God, He will still reveal Himself to him. Revelation is the only way to begin writing a gospel. Once Alex is redeemed from his slavery in prison or Egypt, the process of sanctification begins. His treatment is in accordance with Old Testament law. If the Israelites do not follow God's law, then: "The Lord will send upon you curses, confusion and reproach in everything you set your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done by abandoning him . " (Deut. 28:20). Similar destruction will befall Alex if he does not respect the law that has been implanted in him, the disease will overwhelm him. Alex is forced to reach the second stage of the life of Kierkegard, the ethical man. It is a clock, with all its actions for the universal good, respecting socially accepted moral principles. But the ethical man remains just another disguise for Alex. His ethics are still selfish, so he is still the aesthetic man. As the chaplain himself says after Alex's graduation performance, "He doesn't have a real choice, does he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, led him to that grotesque act of self-humiliation." (126)They tell him that he has made his choice and all this is a consequence of his choice (127), but as the Israelites say to Moses while wandering in the desert: "If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and we ate all the food we wanted, but you brought us to this desert to starve this whole assembly." Alex knew no more about the choice he had made than the Israelites did. They both choose to have faith in what can save them, but they cannot understand what the object of their faith means. Furthermore, there is a difference between the two: while God can have control over their actions, he cannot control their thoughts . The State may: "I thought about killing a fly and felt a little bad." (129) God commands the Israelites to be like Him, but it is still part of their life to refuse this choice, even if it means accepting the punishment. Alex's sanctification allows for no choice, and the only way he can choose otherwise is through death. Fittingly, Alex's lack of freedom of choice is acknowledged only by himself and the chaplain, the only characters in the story who believe in God. Prison Charlie asks the inmates, "You have a birthright to befree, why should you choose this prison over freedom?" When Alex is "cured", the chaplain realizes both the insincerity of the procedure and the deprivation of freedom: "He ceases to be a lawbreaker. It also ceases to be a creature capable of moral choice." (126) Alex is the only prisoner who desires this freedom and works hard to obtain it: "Sir, I did my best, didn't I... I tried, sir, that's not true..." how about this new similar treatment that gets you out of prison in the blink of an eye." (82) No one else in prison longs as much as Alex to be free to pursue that transcendent joy he has sought his entire life. Facing death because sanctification that changes a man's external actions, and not his internal motivations, is an unreliable and ultimately unsuccessful salvation. One of the reasons people kill is “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” "Goodness is chosen" philosophizes the chaplain, "When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." (83) Therefore, what doctors end up creating is a neutral man, incapable of loving, incapable of hating, incapable of doing good, incapable of doing evil. This is the very man that God rejects because this man is not truly his son: "You are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot! Then, since you are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:16) Created man has a choice. When that choice is not exercised, then it has nothing but lukewarmness. This inhuman being the state created Alex into is an angel, incapable of unethical alternative actions. Perhaps Lucifer was one of these inhuman beings, lacking the ability to act on his evil instincts and still be a part of what he knew as life, he instead chose the eternal torment of hell. When the chaplain wonders if God would choose goodness over choice, but his answer is found in the Garden of Eden. If God didn't want us to have a choice, then there would be no tree. Like Lucifer and the first humans, the ability to choose is greater than the imposed paradise. As Alex plummets to the ground in his suicide attempts, this is what he realizes. it is best seen in Alex when, at the end of the second part, the punishment for not respecting the path of goodness is lifted and he returns to his natural state. Before this can happen, Alex is redeemed, literally redeemed, freed from the slavery of the state. The problem is that neither his first redeemer, the government, who uses him as a guinea pig, nor his second savior, F. Alexander, take any responsibility for Alex. He must perform for his redemption. These are the mechanisms behind a clock that does not believe in grace. What they robbed Alex of is something he slowly begins to realize in his redemption: love. When he returns to his parents, he cannot admit that the rejection is painful because now that he is a better person, he expects those around him to treat him that way. It is a form of love that he seeks, a form that he did not seek before. Now he is dependent on the whims of others, forced to be part of a community, and realizes that the only way to survive in that community is through love. But the law Alex is subject to does not require love, only obedience. In his redemption, he is not forgiven with perfect love, but must instead pay, literally with cats, for the wrongs he has committed. He seeks forgiveness, but in a society that does not know how to love others, no one can forgive him for what he has done. None, of course, but perfect love. Unfortunately, Alex is not under the law of perfect love. Below is one who seeks to change the soul, but only the actions. Therefore the sins he has committed must be paid for with his ownred, krovvy red. His parents reject him, he is attacked by the elderly librarians, and he is betrayed again by his friends. And when it seems like there is hope for F. Alexander, he turns around and does the same to Alex that Alex did to him. Because all these actions have "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" at their core. Revenge is not the path to redemption. The love that Alex seeks is. IN THE LIBRARY WITH THE OLD PEOPLE. When everything else has rejected him, including his first three saviors, the symphony, the state and F. Alexander, Alex has nowhere else to turn but this perfect love. The only thing left to save him is unity with God, the unity of a creature with free will, with a being who can impose His laws on it, a clockwork orange. In the past he has rejected this path, but now his worldliness has failed him and he turns to God or Bog and all His holy angels and saints (141). When all the rejections of salvation come together, F. Alexander plays the symphony which triggers the government's reaction in him, he has no choice but to jump out of the window with the intention of joining them. He is stopped, for two reasons. One is because it is not his free choice to be in heaven. All this is the lack of any other choice, and what is this but another form of clockwork? This is precisely what the last two sections of the novel are about, when one chooses the good because he has no other choice, his choice is not truly good, and, as with the apple in Eden, this forced choice is not yet what God want. . Furthermore, he cannot choose God in death if he has not yet chosen Him in life. Alex doesn't care about the rape and death of F. Alexander's wife, the news gives him the best night's sleep he's ever had. He was not redeemed or asked for forgiveness. «Then I say to you: ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For whoever asks receives, whoever seeks finds, and to whomever knocks the door will be opened." (Lk 11,9-10) Alexios does not knock, he waits for it to be opened to him. He has not yet chosen God. HOME summarizes this paradox perfectly. When Alex he returns to the HOME of his former victim, the paradise against which he chose to rebel, he expects to be welcomed with open arms like the Christian prodigal son, the model of Christian forgiveness and love. The house is a place of peace, forgiveness and contentment, and Alex himself confesses, this is what he is looking for at the moment: "I must not insist, though, because I needed help and kindness now (154) However Alex does not let the truth shine through, he does not confess his." sins nor asks for redemption. He lies about his crimes, about the technique and refuses to take responsibility for his actions. Once again, without choice, he cannot obtain redemption: "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not. in us... If we say that we have not committed any sin, we paint him as a liar." , and his Word has no place in us." (1 John 1:8-10) Not even F. Alexander, when he discovers Alex's truth, offers forgiveness. He is another Alex, incapable of forgiveness or redemption, another mechanical product of this dark city. Furthermore, he is an aesthetic man as much as the state and Alex himself, who uses Alex for his personal cause, first the article, then his revenge as much as Alex does not can be achieved without repentance on the part of the sinner leading to forgiveness on the part of the host Perhaps, if the truth had been told, this could have been done, however, because Alex arrives HOME, once again. in the darkness, in the absence of light, in the absence of truth, in the absence of love. Without this love, forgiveness is impossible and redemption is a failure. Therefore he throws himself out of the window looking for redemption, but does not find it without his free choice nor without love: «he who does not love does notknows God, because God is love." (1 John 4:8). He falls to the ground and "had the idea that my whole frame or body was empty as if it were dirty water and then filled again with clean water ". (172) This is his baptism, and the government, once again replacing God, resurrects him in his rebirth. They restore his conditional free will, provided that he supports the government in their re-election efforts. With the return of his freedom, of his aesthetic self appreciating the evil in the world again, Alex surrenders his soul to the devil Both he and the government lie to each other and to themselves, and God has no place in a life that lies Alex is replaced once again by Ludwig Van's violent symphony and the glorious Ninth. He has become an orange again and, as every man with freedom of choice expects, it seems almost inevitable that, without love, he will choose evil, " God has given them to their vile desires and the consequent degradation of their bodies." (Romans 1:24) And now, what will happen?" If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am but a resounding gong or a tinkling cymbal. I might have enough faith to move mountains; but if I don't have love, I'm nothing. I can give all I have to the needy, I can give my body to be burned, but if I have not love, I gain nothing." (Romans 13:1-3) Keep in mind: this is just an example .Get an article customized by our expert writers. Get a custom essayAfter his many redemptions, the aesthete Alex sits back at the Korona Milk Bar and watches everyone around him still trying to reach heaven, "Everyone around was chellovecks far from milk more vellocet and synthemesc and drencrom and other veshches that take you far far away from this real evil world into the land for viddy Bog and all his holy angels and saints. "All he does is watch and participate in this same mindless, repetitive game until he finally becomes bored and hopeless. He doesn't buy old women drinks, not because he hates them, but because he no longer wants to abuse them in his intelligent plans. He looks around and all he sees is the same degeneration that he himself has experienced all his life, with nothing here that can be considered worthy of aspiration. Mozart, he says, did not write heavenly music. This is the paradise that Alex aspires to from the beginning of the story. The irony of the fact that the government took away Alex's chance to be with God is that, by saving Alex's life, they allowed him to realize his need for love, confession, and forgiveness, even when he finally got everything he ever wanted Instead of choosing God because that was the only path left available to him, now he chooses God when he has all the paths available to him and realizes that the only thing he wants is love. It is through love that Alex achieves his true redemption. As Baal did for the Israelites, the god in whom his new salvation rested, the "mighty orchestras (with) violins, trombones and kettledrums" are not enough for him and he finds himself "wallowing more like evil romantic songs." . just a glutton and a piano." There is no violence involved in his new musical taste. It is a simple love that yearns, desires and seeks. He wants to grow old surrounded by love: "And he has given this Georgina of his an equally loving and held one of her horns between hers and she looked back at him, O my brothers." (188) That inexpressible look, inexpressible even for the talkative Alex, is what he wants to share. He dreams of a prosperous future in love, really wondering what it will be. Look at a woman and.

Topic > A character study of Alex in A Clockwork Orange ; she also gave it to her husband and he ate it. Then the eyes of both were opened and the Lord God called the man and said: "What will it be, huh?" should violent video games not be banned"? Get an original essay The answer is humanity's choice: seek God or follow one's natural desires and the truth is irrelevant. He is in the Bible and in Alex's world. Like Adam and Eve in Garden, the Lord asks Burgess's protagonist the same question that Moses asked his Israelites: I have given you the ability to choose. Choose for yourself this day whom you will serve (Joshua 24:15) Some might say that Alex's choices were all determined. from the society in which he lived, but they are nothing more than any choices that we, as human beings, freely possessed. will do, will do. At some point the responsibility must fall on the person making the choice and not on the situation. The choices Alex makes make up his version of the Bible's salvation story: anarchic sinfulness of the lawless man, sanctification that changes outward actions but not the inner heart, rebellion against this sanctification that leads to death, and final redemption through Love. His story is the Gospel according to Alex. "There is none righteous; no, not one... All have fallen away, all have stooped alike." (Romans 3:12) Alex opens the novel as the perfect Kierkegardan aesthetic man. What will it be, huh? It will be, for a while, Kierkegard's first human stage. The aesthetic is primarily concerned with one's individual existence and the sensory experiences one can gain through that existence. This is Alex. After raping the children, he says: "I stayed there, dirty, nagoy and beautiful, fucked and tired on the bed." (46) Furthermore, since the aesthete is concerned only with himself, he enjoys his solitude and secrecy. Alex, of course, is this in spades. He locks himself in his room and distances himself from his family: "I gave him a dirty straight, as if to say pay attention to his and I'll take care of mine." (49) He is extremely individualistic. Fittingly, so is everyone around him: the millicents, the governor, his parents: there is no communion in this world because they share no common belief or purpose. The reason is perhaps as simple as Alex says: "Badness is of the self, of the one, of the thou or of strange things... what I do I do because I like doing it". (40) Later, when the government chooses to reform Alex, they follow the same rule, not because individualism is wrong, but like Alex and F. Alexander, they wish to create their own aesthetic world where their individualism is the only one that exists. . This is why Alex hurts people, not just because he enjoys violence, but because those he hurts do not further his individual purpose. Human society is his society, and once someone stops serving that society, then he stops serving any purpose in life (23). Alex is the first modern utilitarian killer. Only aesthetics lie in moral darkness. “In the beginning… darkness was on the surface of the abyss.” (Genesis 1:1-2)Darkness is the realm of aesthetic man. All of Alex's actions take place in the darkness, literally and figuratively. They travel at night and then reside in the den of iniquity, the Korona Milk Bar, "there was as yet no law against the proud dome of the new vesches which these placed in the old moloko." (1) Furthermore, just as Adam and Eve hid their sin from God with fig leaves, so Alex and his droogs use darkness and disguise tohide from their god, the government. They also do it with words. Not only is Nadsat a degenerative symbol of the West's defeat in the Cold War, but it is Alex's attempt to mask his depravity. Instead of rape and assault it says "inside out" and "tolchok". Like Adam and Eve's fig leaves, Alex's darkness and disguise are necessary to create the beauty he appreciates. “Now the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married such as they chose.” (Gen. 6:2)This beauty is what the aesthetic man seeks. Like angels, Alex sees beauty and grasps it. When he finds a woman, he does the old "in and out" with whoever he likes. When he fights with Billyboy's gang, their battle is like a waltz: lunge, parry, lunge, lunge, and first place again (17). When he fights with his brothers, it's art in action, a dance "I counted odin, dva, tree, and I went ak, ak, ak... Then I made a swish... and I cut... up, cross, cut." (54) Like the builders of Babel who tried to build a "tower that reached to heaven" (Gen 11.3), so too Alexios desires beauty only for his own selfish interest. However, it is a beauty that, although detestable, is understandable in light of the world in which it lives. The government has removed all true beauty, art, theater, literature from the world. Alex's substitute is violence. It uses the same human passions, arousing the same emotions as art. This is why Alex continually destroys books, because they compete with his grotesque definition of beauty. “Then the blood comes out, my brothers, very beautiful indeed.” Like Satan's beauty, beneath the blanket of darkness, what appears beautiful is actually a "horrorshow," a spectacle similar to the violent symphonies he worships. He describes his attacks as a masterpiece that he has composed and is orchestrating, with the screams of his victims as the chords and Catwoman's death as the crescendo. For the man who chooses to be a slave to his own sin, beauty is found in the darkness: "Men loved darkness rather than light because their works were evil." (John 3:18-20) “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” (Romans 1:25) It is because of the violence in the orchestra's music that Alex chooses Ludwig Van as his god: "Music has ever refined me, O my brothers, and made me feel like old Bog himself, ready to do with the old donner and blitzen and I have veck and ptitsa crawling away in my power haha." (42). But what Ludwig Van inspires in Alex is not complete satisfaction, but a promise of something greater, "the beautiful happy melody about joy that is a spark as glorious as heaven." (46). Music is orgasmic and is his way of achieving bliss, but this bliss is just a spark of true ecstasy. Alex and his droogs search through the old moloko: "Then the lights started crackling like atoms... and you were about to get introduced to the old Bog or God, when it's all over. You're back here and now" whining kind of ." (4) In seeking transcendent experience they seek God, even if Alex refuses to agree to do so: "You were not put on this earth just to come into contact with God." (4) It is as Paul says: "No one seek God." (Romans 3:11). It is the race of Israelites before the golden calf, who exchange God for something present, temporary, and satisfying. Alex chooses the temporary over the eternal, a choice that can be seen in his attack on HOME, a symbolic attack of the sinner's choice to rebel against heaven. In HOME, F. Alexander, whose life sadly mirrors that of Burgess, writes of man's ability to choose God, "a man... capable ofsweetness... to drip juicily, at last, around the bearded lips of God." (21). But Alex has "exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things." (Romans 1:25 ) He prefers lies and this man's truth is of no use in his life. "In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." (John 1:4-6)The truth still existsHowever. Both Alex and the State attack a man in an alley who sings of love, but both sides they refuse to accept this light in the darkness because it interferes with their aesthetics. Their worlds cannot have love, because love means responsibility towards others before yourself, the antagonist of aesthetics. Therefore man must be stopped. However, no matter how many times they try to suppress him, he sings the Song of Songs, the song of love. He sings until Alex attacks him and his blood is shed: "One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, causing a sudden flow of blood." (John 19:33-34). Even in prison among the true sinners he sings: "They crucified him together with the criminals, one on his right hand, the other on his left." (Luke 23: 33) His love is analogous to the love of God in Christ, a love that in the first part Alex seeks and resists. However, even if Alex does not choose God, He will still reveal Himself to him. Revelation is the only way to begin writing a gospel. Once Alex is redeemed from his slavery in prison or Egypt, the process of sanctification begins. His treatment is in accordance with Old Testament law. If the Israelites do not follow God's law, then: "The Lord will send upon you curses, confusion and reproach in everything you set your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done by abandoning him . " (Deut. 28:20). Similar destruction will befall Alex if he does not respect the law that has been implanted in him, the disease will overwhelm him. Alex is forced to reach the second stage of the life of Kierkegard, the ethical man. It is a clock, with all its actions for the universal good, respecting socially accepted moral principles. But the ethical man remains just another disguise for Alex. His ethics are still selfish, so he is still the aesthetic man. As the chaplain himself says after Alex's graduation performance, "He doesn't have a real choice, does he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, led him to that grotesque act of self-humiliation." (126)They tell him that he has made his choice and all this is a consequence of his choice (127), but as the Israelites say to Moses while wandering in the desert: "If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and we ate all the food we wanted, but you brought us to this desert to starve this whole assembly." Alex knew no more about the choice he had made than the Israelites did. They both choose to have faith in what can save them, but they cannot understand what the object of their faith means. Furthermore, there is a difference between the two: while God can have control over their actions, he cannot control their thoughts . The State may: "I thought about killing a fly and felt a little bad." (129) God commands the Israelites to be like Him, but it is still part of their life to refuse this choice, even if it means accepting the punishment. Alex's sanctification allows for no choice, and the only way he can choose otherwise is through death. Fittingly, Alex's lack of freedom of choice is acknowledged only by himself and the chaplain, the only characters in the story who believe in God. Prison Charlie asks the inmates, "You have a birthright to befree, why should you choose this prison over freedom?" When Alex is "cured", the chaplain realizes both the insincerity of the procedure and the deprivation of freedom: "He ceases to be a lawbreaker. It also ceases to be a creature capable of moral choice." (126) Alex is the only prisoner who desires this freedom and works hard to obtain it: "Sir, I did my best, didn't I... I tried, sir, that's not true..." how about this new similar treatment that gets you out of prison in the blink of an eye." (82) No one else in prison longs as much as Alex to be free to pursue that transcendent joy he has sought his entire life. Facing death because sanctification that changes a man's external actions, and not his internal motivations, is an unreliable and ultimately unsuccessful salvation. One of the reasons people kill is “When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” "Goodness is chosen" philosophizes the chaplain, "When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." (83) Therefore, what doctors end up creating is a neutral man, incapable of loving, incapable of hating, incapable of doing good, incapable of doing evil. This is the very man that God rejects because this man is not truly his son: "You are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot! Then, since you are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:16) Created man has a choice. When that choice is not exercised, then it has nothing but lukewarmness. This inhuman being the state created Alex into is an angel, incapable of unethical alternative actions. Perhaps Lucifer was one of these inhuman beings, lacking the ability to act on his evil instincts and still be a part of what he knew as life, he instead chose the eternal torment of hell. When the chaplain wonders if God would choose goodness over choice, but his answer is found in the Garden of Eden. If God didn't want us to have a choice, then there would be no tree. Like Lucifer and the first humans, the ability to choose is greater than the imposed paradise. As Alex plummets to the ground in his suicide attempts, this is what he realizes. it is best seen in Alex when, at the end of the second part, the punishment for not respecting the path of goodness is lifted and he returns to his natural state. Before this can happen, Alex is redeemed, literally redeemed, freed from the slavery of the state. The problem is that neither his first redeemer, the government, who uses him as a guinea pig, nor his second savior, F. Alexander, take any responsibility for Alex. He must perform for his redemption. These are the mechanisms behind a clock that does not believe in grace. What they robbed Alex of is something he slowly begins to realize in his redemption: love. When he returns to his parents, he cannot admit that the rejection is painful because now that he is a better person, he expects those around him to treat him that way. It is a form of love that he seeks, a form that he did not seek before. Now he is dependent on the whims of others, forced to be part of a community, and realizes that the only way to survive in that community is through love. But the law Alex is subject to does not require love, only obedience. In his redemption, he is not forgiven with perfect love, but must instead pay, literally with cats, for the wrongs he has committed. He seeks forgiveness, but in a society that does not know how to love others, no one can forgive him for what he has done. None, of course, but perfect love. Unfortunately, Alex is not under the law of perfect love. Below is one who seeks to change the soul, but only the actions. Therefore the sins he has committed must be paid for with his ownred, krovvy red. His parents reject him, he is attacked by the elderly librarians, and he is betrayed again by his friends. And when it seems like there is hope for F. Alexander, he turns around and does the same to Alex that Alex did to him. Because all these actions have "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" at their core. Revenge is not the path to redemption. The love that Alex seeks is. IN THE LIBRARY WITH THE OLD PEOPLE. When everything else has rejected him, including his first three saviors, the symphony, the state and F. Alexander, Alex has nowhere else to turn but this perfect love. The only thing left to save him is unity with God, the unity of a creature with free will, with a being who can impose His laws on it, a clockwork orange. In the past he has rejected this path, but now his worldliness has failed him and he turns to God or Bog and all His holy angels and saints (141). When all the rejections of salvation come together, F. Alexander plays the symphony which triggers the government's reaction in him, he has no choice but to jump out of the window with the intention of joining them. He is stopped, for two reasons. One is because it is not his free choice to be in heaven. All this is the lack of any other choice, and what is this but another form of clockwork? This is precisely what the last two sections of the novel are about, when one chooses the good because he has no other choice, his choice is not truly good, and, as with the apple in Eden, this forced choice is not yet what God want. . Furthermore, he cannot choose God in death if he has not yet chosen Him in life. Alex doesn't care about the rape and death of F. Alexander's wife, the news gives him the best night's sleep he's ever had. He was not redeemed or asked for forgiveness. «Then I say to you: ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For whoever asks receives, whoever seeks finds, and to whomever knocks the door will be opened." (Lk 11,9-10) Alexios does not knock, he waits for it to be opened to him. He has not yet chosen God. HOME summarizes this paradox perfectly. When Alex he returns to the HOME of his former victim, the paradise against which he chose to rebel, he expects to be welcomed with open arms like the Christian prodigal son, the model of Christian forgiveness and love. The house is a place of peace, forgiveness and contentment, and Alex himself confesses, this is what he is looking for at the moment: "I must not insist, though, because I needed help and kindness now (154) However Alex does not let the truth shine through, he does not confess his." sins nor asks for redemption. He lies about his crimes, about the technique and refuses to take responsibility for his actions. Once again, without choice, he cannot obtain redemption: "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not. in us... If we say that we have not committed any sin, we paint him as a liar." , and his Word has no place in us." (1 John 1:8-10) Not even F. Alexander, when he discovers Alex's truth, offers forgiveness. He is another Alex, incapable of forgiveness or redemption, another mechanical product of this dark city. Furthermore, he is an aesthetic man as much as the state and Alex himself, who uses Alex for his personal cause, first the article, then his revenge as much as Alex does not can be achieved without repentance on the part of the sinner leading to forgiveness on the part of the host Perhaps, if the truth had been told, this could have been done, however, because Alex arrives HOME, once again. in the darkness, in the absence of light, in the absence of truth, in the absence of love. Without this love, forgiveness is impossible and redemption is a failure. Therefore he throws himself out of the window looking for redemption, but does not find it without his free choice nor without love: «he who does not love does notknows God, because God is love." (1 John 4:8). He falls to the ground and "had the idea that my whole frame or body was empty as if it were dirty water and then filled again with clean water ". (172) This is his baptism, and the government, once again replacing God, resurrects him in his rebirth. They restore his conditional free will, provided that he supports the government in their re-election efforts. With the return of his freedom, of his aesthetic self appreciating the evil in the world again, Alex surrenders his soul to the devil Both he and the government lie to each other and to themselves, and God has no place in a life that lies Alex is replaced once again by Ludwig Van's violent symphony and the glorious Ninth. He has become an orange again and, as every man with freedom of choice expects, it seems almost inevitable that, without love, he will choose evil, " God has given them to their vile desires and the consequent degradation of their bodies." (Romans 1:24) And now, what will happen?" If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am but a resounding gong or a tinkling cymbal. I might have enough faith to move mountains; but if I don't have love, I'm nothing. I can give all I have to the needy, I can give my body to be burned, but if I have not love, I gain nothing." (Romans 13:1-3) Keep in mind: this is just an example .Get an article customized by our expert writers. Get a custom essayAfter his many redemptions, the aesthete Alex sits back at the Korona Milk Bar and watches everyone around him still trying to reach heaven, "Everyone around was chellovecks far from milk more vellocet and synthemesc and drencrom and other veshches that take you far far away from this real evil world into the land for viddy Bog and all his holy angels and saints. "All he does is watch and participate in this same mindless, repetitive game until he finally becomes bored and hopeless. He doesn't buy old women drinks, not because he hates them, but because he no longer wants to abuse them in his intelligent plans. He looks around and all he sees is the same degeneration that he himself has experienced all his life, with nothing here that can be considered worthy of aspiration. Mozart, he says, did not write heavenly music. This is the paradise that Alex aspires to from the beginning of the story. The irony of the fact that the government took away Alex's chance to be with God is that, by saving Alex's life, they allowed him to realize his need for love, confession, and forgiveness, even when he finally got everything he ever wanted Instead of choosing God because that was the only path left available to him, now he chooses God when he has all the paths available to him and realizes that the only thing he wants is love. It is through love that Alex achieves his true redemption. As Baal did for the Israelites, the god in whom his new salvation rested, the "mighty orchestras (with) violins, trombones and kettledrums" are not enough for him and he finds himself "wallowing more like evil romantic songs." . just a glutton and a piano." There is no violence involved in his new musical taste. It is a simple love that yearns, desires and seeks. He wants to grow old surrounded by love: "And he has given this Georgina of his an equally loving and held one of her horns between hers and she looked back at him, O my brothers." (188) That inexpressible look, inexpressible even for the talkative Alex, is what he wants to share. He dreams of a prosperous future in love, really wondering what it will be. Look at a woman and.